It didn’t used to be. At least for me and i don’t recall constantly seeing posts on social media about how lonely and sad everyone was or how to make friends. Now every other magazine article is about how lonely everyone is, nobody gets together, and gen Z doesn’t socialize, drink, or have sex.
Why is there such an epidemic of loneliness and why are people content to be lonely rather than socialize?
Why is so hard to connect? Because people having nothing in common anymore? I used to connect with people over books, movies, hobbies, etc. But now it feels increasingly hard to do that. Most folks I meet don’t care about any of that, they just mostly complain about their lives to you or go on political rants about how unfair the world is.
My friends and my dates no longer seem to watch films, or do much of anything other than spend time on social media? I dont’ use social media so I’m pretty ignorant of it all.
I’m sure there’s loads of reasons. But something that I notice is even with my good close friends (made in the before-times) it’s sometimes hard to find conversations that are “fun”. Politics has always been depressing, but while Bush era war on terror felt like an outlier, the current shit show feels like somewhat inevitable deathspiral. And it isn’t just a horrible time we need to survive together, until we get back to normal, instead it feels like we started to see how even the “better times” of our history were problematic.
Similarly, or perhaps because of, this gloomy realism in politics, I find it hard to be very exicted about other cultural products. We used to be excited for new tech or new tv, but not only is most modern tech underwhelming, if not outright horrifying, but it also makes me feel like I was dumb to have supported the rise of the Internet and move to an online society, since that seems to just be heading towards dystopia.
So, I think we’re at a (hopefully brief) nadir, where things have been bad and they’re getting worse, which kinda makes it hard to be hopeful or excited about the future. And we also can’t be nostalgic about the past because we see how many terrible things were happening in the background back then.
I’m actually doing OK compared to most people, and am a pretty optimistic person, but this societal pessimism makes it hard to be genuinely excited about stuff, even with friends. Even something as innocent as discussing the weather - is a sunny November a blessed long summer, or a harbinger of climate catastrophe? It’s exhausting and it’s easier to just escape into rewatches and computer games.
yeah i kind of agree. even fun stuff now gets politicized. like i love to read lots of kinds of books. but now people get ‘offended’ at me that i read the ‘wrong’ kinds of books that they don’t like and they feel are ‘wrong’. i don’t get it man. i don’t pick what to read based on it being ‘right’, i read the book then decide if i enjoyed it after i read it.
similar to movies. i see so many people comment negative about a movie now because it doesn’t 100% agree with their political views. on the lemmy the other day i saw a fantasy show get blasted for being ‘too gender essentialist’. like… it’s a fantasy story dude. i’m sorry the dragons aren’t lgbt+ enough for you? it’s so weird to see people politicize every thing. also if you watch older stuff. like mid century movies/books… that same argument comes up that it isn’t ‘progressive’ enough. well progressive didn’t really exist back then like it does today, it’s absurd to expect a movie from 1955 to cater to your politics in 2025 otherwise it’s ‘bad’.
hell i own a dog and a cat and people want to turn that into an argument about politics/culture. my cat and my dog don’t care about politics. they care about treats, walks, and attention. but people want me to have the ‘right’ kind of dog/cat, and feed them the ‘right’ food, and train them the ‘right’ way. it’s insane and i generally do not want to interact with people who think the breed of animal you own is some big deal or that it’s animal abuse unless you are feeding them raw food diet.